Title text: Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly: I have two small corrections for your July issue. One, it's spelled "echinacea", and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.

Dear Randall Munroe: I have two small corrections in your July 12 issue. One, it's spelled "C," and means a 100x factor of dilution, and two, homeopaths would never read a comic as erudite as xkcd and thus won't learn the error of their ways no matter how obvious you make it.

Title text: Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly: I have two small corrections for your July issue. One, it's spelled "echinacea", and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.

This is the first time I've felt weird not knowing if the characters were wearing clothes or not.

Wait wait wait if homeopaths believe that the dilution cures the symptoms exhibited by healthy individuals who are administered the concentration, wouldn't homeopaths use dilute semen as a means of terminating pregnancy?

And try as hard as I like,A small crack appearsIn my diplomacy-dike.“By definition”, I begin“Alternative Medicine”, I continue“Has either not been proved to work,Or been proved not to work.You know what they call “alternative medicine”That’s been proved to work?Medicine.”

rwald wrote:Dear Randall Munroe: I have two small corrections in your July 12 issue. One, it's spelled "C," and means a 100x factor of dilution, and two, homeopaths would never read a comic as erudite as xkcd and thus won't learn the error of their ways no matter how obvious you make it.

Well, I have seen capital X used to denote a 10x dilution, but that's only for really expensive preparations. You see, you have to shake it 10 times after each dilution, or else the water will "forget" the molecules. Going by 100x on each iteration dilutes it a lot faster.

scottgoblue314 wrote:I guess this will end up as the official page since it has the correct title, so here it goes again:

Hold on, since homeopaths believe that the dilution cures the same symptoms that the concentration causes, wouldn't they use dilute semen as a means of terminating pregnancy?

Indeed, I think you'd dilute birth control pills in order to improve a female's ability to become pregnant, and a "day-after pill" or whatever they're called to actually become pregnant.

I like both the set-up and the punch-line, and I guess it's kind of a GOOMHR in that I've only recently heard of and started reading up on homeopathy (shortly after learning about numeral systems such as the one presented in the previous comic, in fact... ...but factual errors r teh unforigvables!!!

ni'o mi nelci le zirpu sovmabrnornitorinku

Spoiler:

++$_ wrote:What's a "degree"?

EDIT: I looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently it's some ancient Babylonian unit for angles :/

Icalasari wrote:Erm, wait, wouldn't diluting semen make her less likely to get pregnant?

In reality, yes. In crazy-land where homeopathy makes sense, though, dilution is supposed to make medicines stronger. That's the joke.

Though, as scottgoblue314 correctly points out, homeopathy is a like-cures-like thing... that is, they claim that an extremely diluted sample of X is a cure for the same symptoms caused by X. So extremely-diluted semen should be a cure for pregnancy, in homeopathy crazy-land.

According to the Wikipedia page on homeopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy), homeopaths often use what they call a 30C dilution which by their terminology would also be a 60X dilution, which is really a 1 part in 1060 dilution, which in biochem would be 1060X. Obviously this is never used in biochem because such a dilution, if performed properly, would have a very low chance of containing a single molecule of the original solution.

So, assuming the comic is using homeopathic terminology, it is still highly unlikely that a single sperm would be present in 30X diluted semen, but I would think that a true homeopathic believer would go for the full power of a 1:1000000000000000000000000000000 dilution of his already 30X diluted semen. Obviously, while such homeopathic semen wouldn't have a single sperm, the water's memory of the sperm (passed on through generations of dilution, since none of the original water molecules would be present either) would serve to fertilize the egg.

scottgoblue314 wrote:Wait wait wait if homeopaths believe that the dilution cures the symptoms exhibited by healthy individuals who are administered the concentration, wouldn't homeopaths use dilute semen as a means of terminating pregnancy?

In which case belief in homeopathy would be strongly selected for.

I had all kinds of plans in case of a zombie attack.I just figured I'd be on the other side.~ASW

I guess my first question, after considering the equipment displayed in the comic, is how sure is he that there's a 30x dilution? I imagine accuracy is everything in homeopathy and that seems rather primitive, especially considering some of the "non-cooperative" properties of the substance in handling.

Inquiry: If increasing the dilution increases the effectiveness of the solution, and a semen dilution would function as illustrated in the comic, wouldn't any semen in the ocean (from say, a couple on the beach), mean that any post-pubescent female in the ocean would get pregnant? Homeopathically speaking of course.

Or

If a semen dilution would function to terminate a pregnancy, as suggested in the comments, would that make the ocean "cure" pregnancy?

*disclaimer: Following this link may result in nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach and diarrhea. Do not view if you have faith in humanity, have a weak heart or are pregnant**. Additional side effects may include vomiting, violent tendencies, thoughts of suicide and loss of consciousness.

**If you are pregnant, swim in the ocean, I read somewhere that the ocean cures pregnancy.

edbdqt wrote:I guess my first question, after considering the equipment displayed in the comic, is how sure is he that there's a 30x dilution? I imagine accuracy is everything in homeopathy and that seems rather primitive, especially considering some of the "non-cooperative" properties of the substance in handling.

The 30x in homeopathy refers to 30 iterations of this process:

Take your active ingredient and mix it into a solution of 1 part active to 9 parts inert (such as water).Mix well by shaking it 10 times in each of 3 directions.What you have now is your new active ingredient.

So, it is rather easy to be accurate and get a 30x solution. Although, at that point if there is even a molecule of the active ingredient left, you should probably buy a lotto ticket. In this case, if she gets pregnant, he should probably get a divorce.

scottgoblue314 wrote:Wait wait wait if homeopaths believe that the dilution cures the symptoms exhibited by healthy individuals who are administered the concentration, wouldn't homeopaths use dilute semen as a means of terminating pregnancy?

You're right about that - partly. If undiluted semen creates pregnancy, then diluted semen would prevent the creation of pregnancy. However, the correct homeopathic remedy for terminating of pregnancy would, technically, be the dilute of that which causes a pregnant woman to get pregnant again. And, as the joke goes, one cannot get a little pregnant, so presumably, one cannot also get more than 100% pregnant.

Meng Bomin wrote:According to the Wikipedia page on homeopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy), homeopaths often use what they call a 30C dilution which by their terminology would also be a 60X dilution, which is really a 1 part in 1060 dilution, which in biochem would be 1060X. Obviously this is never used in biochem because such a dilution, if performed properly, would have a very low chance of containing a single molecule of the original solution.

So, assuming the comic is using homeopathic terminology, it is still highly unlikely that a single sperm would be present in 30X diluted semen, but I would think that a true homeopathic believer would go for the full power of a 1:1000000000000000000000000000000 dilution of his already 30X diluted semen. Obviously, while such homeopathic semen wouldn't have a single sperm, the water's memory of the sperm (passed on through generations of dilution, since none of the original water molecules would be present either) would serve to fertilize the egg.

Here, I suppose were also assuming that the water remember's living sperm cells, even though one would expect them all to die during the long and shaky process that homeopaths use to dilute fluids. If the memory of semen is that hardy, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with drinking water, anymore...

...although I guess it'll be alright, as the semen concentration of tap water is probably considerably higher than in any homeopathic remedies.

Anyhow, I'm off to study some string theory; I'll need it if I'm ever to become a successful pharmacist (because, you see, E=mc^2, but all the mass in the Universe can be compressed to the size of a bowling ball, so we can cross out mass and tgen we're left with E equals the speed of light (and that's why the eyes are so important), but also Stephen Hawkings gave us the string theory about other energetic particles in the Universe, so now we have E equals c^2 and vibration).

ni'o mi nelci le zirpu sovmabrnornitorinku

Spoiler:

++$_ wrote:What's a "degree"?

EDIT: I looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently it's some ancient Babylonian unit for angles :/

Icalasari wrote:Erm, wait, wouldn't diluting semen make her less likely to get pregnant?

In reality, yes. In crazy-land where homeopathy makes sense, though, dilution is supposed to make medicines stronger. That's the joke.

Though, as scottgoblue314 correctly points out, homeopathy is a like-cures-like thing... that is, they claim that an extremely diluted sample of X is a cure for the same symptoms caused by X. So extremely-diluted semen should be a cure for pregnancy, in homeopathy crazy-land.

Isn't this rather how humans build up immunities to things such as venoms? By giving someone very, very small doses of snake venom, they will eventually become immune to it? I guess it's true, even the most illogical of things come from logical backgrounds

Anyways, I was wondering how long it was going to take him to attack homeopathy. Only 765 comics in!

tesseraktik wrote:Anyhow, I'm off to study some string theory; I'll need it if I'm ever to become a successful pharmacist (because, you see, E=mc^2, but all the mass in the Universe can be compressed to the size of a bowling ball, so we can cross out mass and tgen we're left with E equals the speed of light (and that's why the eyes are so important), but also Stephen Hawkings gave us the string theory about other energetic particles in the Universe, so now we have E equals c^2 and vibration).

demadaha wrote:Inquiry: If increasing the dilution increases the effectiveness of the solution, and a semen dilution would function as illustrated in the comic, wouldn't any semen in the ocean (from say, a couple on the beach), mean that any post-pubescent female in the ocean would get pregnant? Homeopathically speaking of course.

Or

If a semen dilution would function to terminate a pregnancy, as suggested in the comments, would that make the ocean "cure" pregnancy?

The ocean would serve as birth control, not terminate pregnancy, as others pointed out. 30x means that he mixed 1 part solution with 9 parts water, then either tossed some out and then repeated, or he mixed those 10 parts with 90 parts water, etc. until he used up all of Earth's water at around the 20th iteration. Assuming there was periodic discarding, and that ended up in the water system, wouldn't that provide birth control to everyone who drinks water from Earth? If so, that would STRONGLY favor homeopaths, because they would know to drink untainted water from meteoroids or glaciers that froze before humans came onto the scene.

demadaha wrote:Inquiry: If increasing the dilution increases the effectiveness of the solution, and a semen dilution would function as illustrated in the comic, wouldn't any semen in the ocean (from say, a couple on the beach), mean that any post-pubescent female in the ocean would get pregnant? Homeopathically speaking of course.

Or

If a semen dilution would function to terminate a pregnancy, as suggested in the comments, would that make the ocean "cure" pregnancy?

The ocean would serve as birth control, not terminate pregnancy, as others pointed out. 30x means that he mixed 1 part solution with 9 parts water, then either tossed some out and then repeated, or he mixed those 10 parts with 90 parts water, etc. until he used up all of Earth's water at around the 20th iteration. Assuming there was periodic discarding, and that ended up in the water system, wouldn't that provide birth control to everyone who drinks water from Earth? If so, that would STRONGLY favor homeopaths, because they would know to drink untainted water from meteoroids or glaciers that froze before humans came onto the scene.

This is why I love xkcd

Izawwlgood wrote:I for one would happily live on an island as a fuzzy seal-human.

I'd like to second this. I'd say a placebo is the most powerful medicine man has found so far; nothing else I know of can cure such a wide range of illnesses, so I think a little respect towards placebo's, and hence homeopathy, is due.